


True Colours

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Marauders' Era, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-23
Updated: 2007-05-23
Packaged: 2019-01-19 20:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12417648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Sirius doesn't talk about it, but he pictures people and things in terms of colours.





	True Colours

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

<b>DISCLAIMER:</b> This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

Written as a get-well fic for Erastes. Oh, and the line "a dim, purple kind of smell" is from C.S. Lewis's _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader._

***     


Sirius doesn't talk about it, but he pictures people and things in terms of colours.

His friends, of course, think that he's crazy. James has told him quite bluntly that there's no such thing as "a dim, purple kind of smell"; Peter just stares at him in confusion when he says that the colour orange rubs his nerves raw. But he knows that there is such a scent in early autumn, the smell of wind and twilight and fallen leaves and the chill of not-quite-snow on the horizon. He knows that orange is a mean, petty colour, all nails on a chalkboard and burning rubber and melodies sung off-key.

He doesn't know how to explain this in pedestrian terms. Nowadays, he no longer tries.

But he thinks about colours and his friends. Oh, yes.

James, for all the red and gold that he wears so proudly as Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, is _blue_. A brilliant blue, like a bright blue October sky without a single cloud, the sky that James loves so much. He is the bluish-purple solidity of granite, the impetuous quarrelsomeness of a jay, the cheerful impudence of a bluebird, the unexpected solemnity of winter twilight.

Peter, on the other hand, is _yellow_. And he laughs a little when he thinks that, because if Peter heard that, he'd horribly insulted by the smear on his courage, and that's not what Sirius means at all. Peter is the sunniest of the four; Sirius pictures him in terms of sunlight gleaming chiaroscuro on Lake Hogwarts. There's a sturdy omnipresence to Peter, like that golden plant every farmer grows to feed their livestock. Rapeweed, that's the name. Horrible name, but good for much more than anyone would think. And Peter is always the one who seems to notice Remus's pain or James's unhappiness or Sirius's angry depression first, so perhaps he's a bit like a canary in a coal mine, always the first to sense something wrong. Yes, yellow suits Peter.

Sirius knows that his own colour is _red_. Fire-red, some would say, thinking of his temper, and yes, that's true, but that's not the whole picture. He can be brick-red with humiliation, and red brick in that he's not quite brownstone, not quite the aristocrat that he was raised to be. He is as belligerent and as territorial as a cardinal, and just as inclined to pick stupid fights over things that mean nothing to his opponents. And he is--though he would deny it at wandpoint--the most romantic of the four, longing to be both chivalrous hero and sentimental lover, a bloodied sword clenched in one fist and a red rose clutched in the other. And then he thinks of his family, and how his kin clash with his ideals, and he recalls the red sky of morning--brilliant and beautiful, but an ill omen for someone.

Remus has some of each of their qualities--James's fierce independence, and Peter's cheerfulness, and Sirius's own fiery stubbornness--so it's not surprising that Remus's colour is _brown_. After all, that's the colour you get when you combine red, yellow and blue. And brown is the colour of lots of beautiful and useful things--tree trunks, fresh-baked bread, the earth itself. Remus, Sirius is convinced, is as necessary to life as any of these things. To his life, anyway.

He quite deliberately does not think of any other people or their colours, but one more person emerges anyway.

Regulus.

Regulus is _green_.

Well, yes, green as in naïve, inexperienced, gullible. But also green with youth, like new grass, or greenish-gold leaves in the spring. He's the greyish-green of the ocean, all shallows in one place and unexpectedly deep in another, seemingly placid on the surface without giving anyone a clue as to what is going on in the depths. He's the green of Slytherin's serpent; at one time, like the Midgard serpent, he embraced and encircled Sirius's whole world. And of course, he's the green of unripe apples--sweet and sour simultaneously, and irresistible.

And at this point, Sirius always shakes his head. He knows, in a dim way that he takes care not to examine too closely, that he should not be thinking of his brother in connection with serpents and apples.

In his nightmares, though, the images recur. In his dreams, his brother is always coiled around him in a bonelessly serpentine embrace, his forked tongue flickering in and out of his mouth as he pleads silently with Sirius, his breath smelling of apples. It seems as if all the vitality of the world is in Regulus as he speaks, and everything in Sirius wants to crush him tight and hold him forever.

But instead, he always pushes Regulus away, uttering harsh, unheard words that blacken and burn something in Regulus, just as fire chars green wood.

And Regulus falls.

He falls through a pea-green and infinitely deep ocean, so deep that Sirius can't reach him. Not that he tries. He knows, somehow, that not trying to save his brother is a mistake, but he never figures out how to correct it.

And then Regulus lands at his brother's feet, his face illuminated by the ghostly green light of the Killing Curse.

Sirius always awakens in horror then and lies awake, shuddering, till dawn. Not remembering. Not wanting to remember.

But as he lies there, staring at a ceiling that he cannot see, listening to Peter snoring and James mumbling Lily's name and Remus sighing as he settles more comfortably under the covers, he wishes fervently, without knowing why, that he could look at Regulus and not see the colour _green_ in his face. 


End file.
